Literature of Knowledge & Literature of Power

Essay: Literature of Knowledge and Literature of Power by Thomas De Quincy

What really do we mean by the classifying term literature? The most ready answer is that which is printed in a book. But that quick definition is easily disturbed: what about unwritten sermons, speeches, dramas, and songs? What about oral traditions and tales? Once these are recorded in writing, certainly we would classify them as literature; but are they not literature until that point? What were the finest of Shakespeare's or Aristophanes' plays before they were recorded? Or the apology of Socrates? What really is literature?

In Thomas De Quincy's opinion,

Books, therefore, do not suggest an idea coextensive and interchangeable with the idea of literature, since much literature...may never come into books, and much that does come into books may connect itself with no literary interest.

Rather, it is the content of a work which defines its place as literature, not the medium. One essential criteria for classifying literature, he says, is its universality.

[It has] some relation to a general and common interest of man, so that what applies only to local or professional or merely personal interest, even though presenting itself in the shape of a book, will not belong to literature. 

But he doesn't give any more criteria than that. Instead, he pivots and focuses on the definition of literature, defining its two primary functions (which can be intertwined):

1. Literature of Knowledge: Functions to Teach 
Literature of knowledge is that which aims primarily to convey information to the reader. In De Quincy's estimation, this is the inferior function of literature. As he describes,

All the steps of knowledge, from first to last, carry you further on the same plane, but could never raise you one foot above your ancient level of earth; whereas the very first step in power is a flight, is an ascending movement into another element where earth is forgotten.

By reading works of this sort, we grow in knowledge or information about something. Intrinsically, this implies novelty. We learn truths which we did not know before, and so increase our storehouse of knowledge. But these are lower forms of truths, De Quincy claims, because of this novelty: higher truths are inherent, not novel. Their roots are already in us; they need to be cultivated, not planted. In his words,

It is the grandeur of all truth which can occupy a very high place in human interests that it is never absolutely novel to the meanest of minds: it exists eternally, by way of germ or latent principle, in the lowest as in the highest, needing to be developed but never to be planted.

All literature of knowledge is transitory. It is eventually made obsolete by literature which presents newer developments in knowledge, or literature which presents the same knowledge in a more palatable way.

The very highest work that has ever existed in the literature of knowledge is but a provisional work, a book upon trial and sufferance...

2. Literature of Power: Functions to Move
 Literature of power is that which aims primarily to move the reader. What do we learn by reading The Call of the Wild? Not much. But works like this appeal to power, not knowledge. What do we feel? A lot. And more than that, we are reminded of latent ideals which remained dormant in our minds.

Tragedy, romance, fairy tale, or epopee, all alike restore to man's mind the ideals of justice, of hope, of truth, of mercy, of retribution, which else (left to the support of daily life in its realities) would languish for want of sufficient illustration.

This is the value of literature of power: it stirs up the great ideals of man and ignites his moral capacities. It throws us into action through inspiration. It pushes us forward, preventing us from lying down in the mire of daily drudge. And it shouts at us, "Press on! Press on to something greater!" Literature of power shines before us those ethereal ideals, in all ages nested in the bosom of our human nature, which the darkness of our times can easily encroach upon and snuff. And this literature, like its ideals, is unalterable and enduring. As Thomas De Quincy remarks,

A good steam-engine is properly superseded by a better. But one lovely pastoral valley is not superseded by another, nor a statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michelangelo.

So write on, novelists! Read on, fiction enthusiasts! You are engaged in a magnificent task. But be careful with the books you take in your hand: for literature has power.